The scholarship holders of the 2025 edition of the short-term research grants at Biblioteca Nacional de Portugal, Torre do Tombo and in archives and libraries across the country have already been chosen. The initiative aims to support the promotion of the Portuguese language and culture in the USA.

These programs are aimed at students, teachers, and researchers attached to educational or research institutions in the U.S., with a view to providing a productive stay in Portugal and access to research tools needed for the research projects of those selected.

The grants awarded by FLAD in partnership with DGLAB – Torre do Tombo and Biblioteca Nacional de Portugal are aimed at researching Portuguese history, culture and languages, and other related topics, based on the collections of both archives. The FLAD Portuguese Archives Scholarship, created last year to reinforce the promotion and accessibility of face-to-face research, extends to archives and libraries throughout the country (mainland Portugal and the Islands).

Those selected will receive a scholarship, with a maximum duration of 3 months, in the amount of 1400 euros/month, with an additional support of 750 euros for travel-related expenses.

Find out who the grantees are and the title of their research projects:

Torre do Tombo:

  • Glauber Santos – PhD candidate in History at Saint Louis University, focusing on “Medieval and Early Modern Iberia.” He completed his master’s degree in Medieval Studies at FLUP, where he investigated abuses in Portuguese lands by the Order of Santiago, simultaneously conducting other research in the archives of Torre do Tombo;
  • Bruna Kalil Othero – Bruna Kalil Othero (Belo Horizonte, 1995) is a writer, performer, translator, teacher, and researcher. She is the author of the novel O presidente pornô (Companhia das Letras, 2023), as well as three books of poetry and one of fiction. She has organized two collections of essays on Brazilian women writers. She is currently pursuing a PhD in Portuguese and literary translation at Indiana University (USA) and is preparing a biography of Hilda Hilst for Companhia das Letras. She was on the Forbes Brazil Under 30 list in 2024;
  • Roberto Amado – Roberto Amado is a journalist with extensive experience in the Brazilian mainstream press and a writer who has published eight books of literature. In the academic field, he holds a master’s degree in Comparative Studies of Portuguese Language Literatures from the University of São Paulo (USP), with research focused on the work of Jorge Amado and the Romance de 30. In his doctoral studies, also at USP, he broadened his field of study to include international literary connections between Brazil, the United States, and Portugal in the period from 1920 to 1940. This path led him to the PhD program in the Department of Portuguese at Indiana University Bloomington, where he continues his research in comparative literature and transatlantic relations;
  • Inês Pedrosa e Melo – Inês Pedrosa e Melo (1994) is a documentary filmmaker, producer, and video editor, born in Coimbra and raised in Lisbon, Portugal. She currently works between her native country and the San Francisco Bay Area in California. With a background in media, film, and anthropology, she applies an interdisciplinary approach to her documentary filmmaking, relying heavily on ethnographic research and fieldwork to produce her films. To date, her work has focused on themes such as marginal cultural practices and symbols and institutions of counterculture; the relationship between people and death; the body, beauty, and identity; and physical and psychological resilience. She completed her MFA (Master of Fine Arts) in Documentary Film and Video Production at Stanford University, California, in 2019;
  • Roquinaldo Ferreira – Roquinaldo Ferreira is a professor of African and Atlantic history at the University of Pennsylvania. His research focuses on slavery, empire, and the South Atlantic world. He has published extensively on Angola, Brazil, and the Portuguese empire and is currently researching a book on political realignments across the Luso-Afro-Asian world during the Age of Revolutions.

 

Biblioteca Nacional de Portugal:

  • Yasmin Z. Vasconcelos – Yasmin Z. Vasconcelos has a degree in Portuguese Language and Literatures from the Federal University of Espírito Santo (Brazil) and a PhD in Luso-Afro-Brazilian Studies and Theory from the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth (USA). She has published articles in specialized academic journals in Brazil, Portugal and the United States, including Revista de Comunicação e Linguagens – RCL and Journal of Lusophone Studies, respectively. Her research focuses on Lusophone cultural studies, with an emphasis on gender and sexuality. She is an instructor of Portuguese at Harvard University;
  • Lucia Costigan – Lúcia Helena Costigan is a full professor at the Ohio State University. Her scholarship focuses on comparative studies of ethnic and race relations, and political and religious conflicts in the Iberian Atlantic World during the 15th-17th centuries. Her publications have appeared in prestigious journals, she has been awarded esteemed grants including a recent Fulbright, and she is recognized for bringing together scholars from across disciplines and institutions;
  • Jakob Myers – Jackob Myers is originally from the Chicago area. His interest in the study of African history began during his undergraduate studies at Michigan State University, where he earned a BA in History with a focus on the Arab world and GIS in 2021. Following this, his fascination with the musical traditions of the Portuguese-speaking world led him to independently learn the language. Since then, Jackob has deepened his knowledge of the history of coastal East Africa and Portuguese paleography at Indiana University, under the guidance of Dr. Pedro Machado;
  • Teresa Castelão-Lawless – Teresa Castelão Lawless holds a bachelor’s and master’s degree in Philosophy from the Classical University of Lisbon, Portugal, and a master’s and doctorate in Science and Technology Studies (history, philosophy, and sociology of science and technology) from Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University (VaTech) in Blacksburg, Virginia, USA. She is fluent in Portuguese, English, and French, with proficiency in Spanish and Italian. She is currently a professor in the Departments of Philosophy and History at Grand Valley State University (GVSU), located in Allendale, Michigan, USA. She was awarded short-term research grants from FLAD-BNP, having conducted studies on the dissemination of modern science in Portugal during the 20th century;
  • Ricardo Vasconcelos – Ricardo Vasconcelos is a professor of Portuguese language and literature at San Diego State University in California, where he also heads the Department of Spanish and Portuguese. His studies and publications address the relationships between Lusophone modernisms and international avant-garde movements, adopting methodologies from literary criticism and theory as well as textual criticism. In 2021-2022, he was a fellow of the prestigious Fulbright U.S. Scholar program;
  • Pedro Schacht Pereira – Pedro Schacht Pereira was born in Porto in 1969. He has a BA in Philosophy from the University of Coimbra (1993) and a PhD in Luso-Brazilian Studies from Brown University (2005). He was a Postdoctoral Fellow and Visiting Assistant Professor at the University of Chicago between 2005-08. He has been teaching at The Ohio State University since 2008, first as an Assistant Professor and, since 2014, as an Associate Professor. He was part of the team that implemented the new PhD program in Studies of the Portuguese-Speaking World at the same university in 2012. His publications focus mainly on Afro-diasporic literatures in Portuguese in the 19th, 20th and 21st centuries. He has directed MA and PhD dissertations on these topics and has also participated in dissertation committees in the US, Brazil, and Portugal. In the 2023-24 Academic Year he was a Visiting Associate Professor at Yale University;
  • Patrícia Martins Marcos – Patrícia Martins Matos is an Assistant Professor of History of Science, Technology, and Medicine at the University of Oklahoma. She holds a Ph.D. in History and Science Studies from the University of California, San Diego. Her research explores the intersections of science, medicine, nature, and power in the Portuguese colonial context of the Luso-Afro-Brazilian Atlantic. Spanning the early modern and modern periods, her work critically examines how ideas of a so-called “Natural Order”;
  • Maíra Mendes Galvão – Maíra Maíra Mendes Galvão holds a Master in Translation Studies by the University of São Paulo, Brazil, and is a PhD candidate at UMass Amherst in the USA. She has been a translator for over twenty years and is also a poet and multimedia artist. Her current research involves translation studies, Early Modern Iberian literature, and Premodern women’s writing. Her larger research interest is studying epistemological and intersemiotic aspects of Premodern women’s work from a translation studies lens;

 

Portuguese Archives:

  • Emily Barber – Emily Barber is a doctoral student at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, in the Comparative Literature department. She works at the intersection of post-colonial studies, Lusophone studies, film studies, and African studies. Emily’s research focuses on the role of literature and film in revolutionary and anticolonial movements. Emily is also a translator, and works in English, Spanish and Portuguese. She has recently spent time researching and writing in Limpopo, South Africa, and Braga, Portugal;
  • Ana Isabel Santos – Ana Isabel Santos completed her master’s degree in Literary, Cultural and Interart Studies – branch of comparative studies and intercultural relations at the University of Porto in 2020, with a dissertation on interart relations in the work of the poet of multiple craft Mário-Henrique Leiria, a reference of Portuguese Surrealism. At this institution, she also joined the Margarida Losa Institute of Comparative Literature as a non-doctoral researcher. She is currently studying for a PhD in Modern and Contemporary Peninsular Literature at the University of Colorado at Boulder, where she is also a part-time graduate instructor of Portuguese and Spanish and where she currently serves as Graduate Student Representative and member of the RSO (Recognized Student Organization) of the Spanish and Portuguese Graduate Association of the University of Colorado at Boulder, including the organization of the department’s annual conference. Her doctoral research is dedicated to the study of women artists in the context of Portuguese and Latin American Surrealism;
  • Leandro Martan – Leandro Martan is a Ph.D. student in Portuguese (Lusophone Literature) at Indiana University. He holds a Master’s degree from the University of São Paulo, specializing in Archaeology and Society, and a bachelor’s degree in Social Sciences from Fundação Getúlio Vargas;
  • António Tomás – António Tomás is an associate professor of Anthropology at the University of California-Irvine. He holds a PhD in Anthropology from Columbia University in New York and has taught at various universities in Africa, the US, and France. He is the author of various books, such as a biography of Amílcar Cabral (O Fazedor de Utopias/The Reluctant Nationalist) and a monograph on Luanda (In the Skin of the City: Spatial Transformation in Luanda);
  • Carole Champagne – Professor of Modern Languages, Coordinator of the Spanish and Portuguese Program, and Advisor for English as a Second Language and French at the University of Maryland Eastern Shore. Former Interim Director, Center for International Education; Coordinator of Global Programs. Advisor for the Fulbright Program on Campus. Advisor for Gilman International Scholarship Certification and Critical Language Scholarships in Maryland. Formerly an Affiliated Professor in the Department of Languages, Literatures, and Cultures at the University of Delaware.